Clinkscale enjoying life in Lexington

With all the football he watches on the practice field or in the film room, Kentucky secondary coach Steve Clinkscale doesn’t always want to watch football on TV when he gets home.

Often, though, his wife, Jasena, has a different idea.

“My wife watches more football at home than I do. I come home and I don’t want to watch football and she wants to watch football all day Saturday and Sunday. I just want to watch TV and relax. But not her. She loves watching football,” said Clinkscale.

She also obviously enjoys raising a family. The Clinkscales have four children ranging in age from 11 to 14. That includes 11-year-old twins Zion and Zivon.

“The twins are like a spitting image of myself,” Clinkscale said. “It is like three of us walking around there giving my wife a hard time. I have a 12-year-old, Elijah, and my oldest son, Isaiah, is 14. My wife is clearly an angel.

“My oldest two play football and track and my youngest two are into baseball. They all love Kentucky. They love living her and love the players and enjoy being around them.”

Clinkscale, who came to UK from Cincinnati before last season, said it was almost liking having triplets since his twins were born about a year after Elijah.

“The twins were born a little early, so they were in the hospital for 75 days. Their situation was a little different,” Clinkscale said. “Both my twin sons were born weighing less than two pounds. They did a great job at the hospital with them as well as my wife and myself. We never panicked. We had faith.”

Kentucky coach Mark Stoops certainly had faith in Clinkscale when he hired him and he’s turned out to not only be a solid coach, but a gifted recruiter. In UK’s 2018 recruiting class, he’s helped secure verbal commitments from lineman Marquan McCall, one of the top two players in Michigan; linebacker DeAndre Square, one of the Midwest’s top linebackers from Michigan; and Quinton Wilson, a big-time offensive line prospect from Cincinnati.

Perhaps it is his diversified background. He played four years at Division II Ashland University. He played in the Snow Bowl, the premier Division II all-star game, in Fargo, N.D. He coached seven seasons at Ashland — where he was also the team’s academic liaison. He spent a year at Western Carolina and then moved on to Toledo where he coached Desmond Marrow, the nephew of UK recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow.

“I think all experiences help from Division II to 1-AA to the SEC. I think you learn how to work with players at all levels and different situations and different skill sets. It set a good foundation for me being a teacher,” he said.

What about playing in the Snow Bowl?

“I think I have a T-shirt and watch and memories of how high the snow was in North Dakota from that game,” he laughed and said. “Players here would have no idea what the Snow Bowl even was.”